How much does good design matter?

European law requires that medicine package leaflets are "written and designed to be clear and understandable" to general users. However, most regulatory activity concentrates on text review. How much does good design matter?

As information designers, we at Consumation set out to demonstrate the benefit of good design, and to see whether we could prove that it made any difference to the performance of package leaflets. We took two different presentations of an identical text, with and without features of best design practice; and we subjected them both to user testing, using the European Commission's regulatory guidelines.

Results? The "under-designed" leaflet failed the benchmark; the "best practice" leaflet passed. When we further investigated search times, we found marked differences that convinced us of the effect of design. So we now have evidence that expert design of a package leaflet can transform people's understanding of the information it contains.

We plan further research. In the meantime, we can start defining what gives leaflets a friendly and accessible feel.

Our findings have now been published in an article for the Information Design Journal, (IDJ 18(3), 225-240 (Amsterdam, 2010) as part of a special issue on healthcare. Visit them, or contact us for further information.